Kukla's Korner Hockey

Entries with the tag: mathieu garon

Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Mathieu Garon is expected to miss three to four weeks with a slight tear of his groin muscle, general manager Steve Yzerman said Wednesday.

Dustin Tokarski will be called up from the Lightning’s minor league affiliate in Norfolk, Va., and join the team in Washington, D.C., for its game Thursday against the Washington Capitals, Yzerman said.

Garon was injured 3 minutes, 54 seconds into Tuesday’s 7-3 loss to the Ottawa Senators. Dwayne Roloson entered in relief and gave up five goals on 33 shots.

Garon, who is 23-16-4 this season, had been carrying the load in goal as Tampa Bay fought back into playoff contention. He has a 2.85 goals against average and a save percentage of .901.

Gotta play catch-up again first, as yesterday’s minor league update took longer than expected and robbed from some of my otherwise-set-aside-for-writing time. Alas, it’s Saturday morning’s edition of JJ’s Three Cheers.

From Thursday’s games first:

***Cheers to Ottawa’s Jason Spezza, who put up a goal and four points in total, factoring in on all of his club’s offense as the Senators downed the New York Islanders 4-1. Losers of six straight (and outscored 20-5 in their last five contests), consider that quality start to the season officially neutralized and then some for the Isles.

The daily toast to last night’s stars around the league (with an extra day to quickly catch up on, thanks to an annoyance in another sector of my life that was completely beyond my control). Now then…

From Tuesday’s games, JJ’s Three Cheers go out to:

***Mathieu Garon of the Columbus Blue Jackets, for a 29-save, 3-0 shutout over Montreal**Minnesota’s Niklas Backstrom, for a 36-save, 1-0 blanking of San Jose*And big time cheers to Vancouver’s Raffi Torres, whose hat trick led the Canucks to a 4-3 win over Edmonton.

Tuesday evening was not kind to the Montreal Canadiens, who were outplayed and outhustled by an enthusiastic Blue Jackets team. Carey Price was the difference for the Habs – he made too many outstanding saves to count. Benoit Pouliot was probably the closest to scoring for the Habs, with a good chance halfway through the third. The Montreal power play continued to falter despite the return of Andrei Markov, and it is very quickly becoming a significant issue. Mathieu Garon was great, scoring the shutout for Columbus in their 3-0 win.

The biggest surprise of the evening? The play of Jaroslav Spacek, or rather the fact that he played at all. Coach Jacques Martin had hinted that Spacek would be out, a rumour considered confirmed by Alex Picard, who spoke to reporters about how excited he was to be playing with Andrei Markov (a player he’d never been paired with before, as Markov had been out with a knee injury). However, coach Martin apparently had a change of heart and dressed Spaced, who promptly took a penalty early on

that resulted in a Columbus power play goal

and gave Columbus an unnecessary power play (Columbus scored about five minutes later, on a power play due to a Benoit Pouliot penalty. Credit to dwgs for noticing the error). Spacek also did his best to score on Carey Price early in the game, in a painful miscue, but Price managed to make a toe save involving reflexes beyond the imagination of most, this author definitely included.

It’s time, once again, to raise a glass and offer a toast (figuratively, of course – or not) to the NHL’s stars from a night ago:

***Cheers to Mathieu Garon of the Columbus Blue Jackets, who warded off a Philadelphia Flyers comeback attempt to the tune of 28 saves after goals from rookie Kyle Wilson (his first in the NHL) and Derick Brassard established an early 2-0 lead for the home squad. At 5-3-0, the Blue Jackets are still buried beneath Nashville, Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis in the Western Conference’s Central Division standings, making last night’s key performances from their backup goaltender and a couple of young stars that much more important.

The Pittsburgh Penguins have acquired goaltender Mathieu Garon from the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for goaltender Dany Sabourin, forward Ryan Stone and a fourth round draft pick in the 2011 Entry Draft, it was announced today by Executive Vice President and General Manager Ray Shero.

“I just got the pads a couple of days ago ... different, eh?” said Garon, who looks more compact in darker colours after wearing pads that were heavily white.

Garon will wear the blue and orange on retro nights. For now, he’ll be breaking in new gear, and is glad that he has the equipment about 10 days before the Oilers’ season opener against the Colorado Avalanche.

“They asked me if I wanted a new mask, too. That’s coming. Totally different stuff on the mask. I don’t want to say what. I’ll have two masks, one for regular, one for the third jersey.”